David Edelman - Infoquake

Eventually, Natch decided it was pointless to search for routine in a trip that was anything but. Nobody had given him a chance to gather his belongings or say goodbye to Horvil; they did not even tell him whether he would be returning to finish his last few months of initiation. The pilot had simply yanked him out of his cabin and thrown him into the Falcon next to the bloody, twitching Brone without a word of explanation. The whole operation smelled of sweat and desperate improvisation.

As they began their descent into Cape Town, Natch craned his neck to catch a glimpse out the front windows. He could see a small squad of Defense and Wellness Council officers in crisp white robes standing at attention on the runway. Their presence kept a crowd of fifty at bay while the Falcon completed its vertical landing sequence. Natch could see a pack of drudges and Brone's anxious parents among the throng and was suddenly glad the hive had enlisted the Council's protection. The mob might or might not be daunted by the shuttle crew's dartguns, but nobody would dare assault him in plain view of Len Borda's troops. The code in a Council officer's darts could very well be lethal.

Only after Natch had been hustled indoors did he realize that the Council squad was not there to ensure his safety. No, they were still out on the runway waiting for the second Falcon, which had been following close behind.

They were waiting to unload the bodies.

It wasn't the first time Serr Vigal had to duck out of a fundraising pitch at a moment's notice because of Natch. It wouldn't be the last. When the news arrived this time, he was talking to a consortium of LPRACGs a hundred million kilometers away on Mars about spinal cord bandwidth. Vigal thought about hopping on the next Earthbound shuttle, but decided he couldn't afford the delay and headed for the public multi facilities instead. Two days later, he was still waiting for a long-distance multi connection to open up. Finally, he grew impatient and decided to blow his entire Vault account on a teleportation instead.

By the time Serr Vigal arrived at the Cape Town TeleCo station, groggy and ill-tempered from the four-and-a-half-hour transfer process, Natch's name had permeated the Data Sea like a foul odor.

His experience became known to the public as "the Shortest Initiation." The term came from the drudges, whose coverage of the affair showcased their ability to reduce a complex set of human events to the common denominators of Good and Evil. Vigal was saddened to discover that Natch had been assigned the latter role. GREED AND SOLIPSISM: THE LAST LESSONS OF THE HIVE? read one of the story headlines. OUR ANCESTORS MAY NOT HAVE HAD OCHRES, BUT THEY HAD ETHICS, opined another. CIVILITY IS DEAD, claimed a third. The Proud Eagle tried to convince the public that accidental deaths happened every year during initiation, but the people were not placated. Yes, occasionally there were mishapsbrawls and knife fights, flu outbreaks, once even an avalanche-but three boys from one hive mauled by a bear? Unprecedented. Inexcusable. Governmentalists and libertarians alike took to the floors of their L-PRACGs to denounce Natch and the Proud Eagle.

The headmaster and three of the senior proctors met Serr Vigal at the foot of the TeleCo station platform. They bowed before him in a very poor impression of humility.

"So Natch knows I'm on my way to get him?" said the neural programmer.

"I'm afraid we can't permit him to go anywhere yet," replied the headmaster gravely. "Natch is still fighting off the infections he contracted in the wild. I'm sorry, but rules are rules."

Vigal was in no mood for games. "Nonsense," he sighed. "Show me these medical reports that say he's still infected." The proctors exchanged surreptitious looks as the headmaster's charade quickly col lapsed. She forwarded the documents to Vigal, who projected them at arm's length for anybody to see. "It's quite obvious the boy doesn't have anything," he said at length, pointing to the array of charts floating in the air between them. "Blood pressure, heart rate, OCHRE functions-all normal. I'm afraid you have no legal right to keep the boy isolated here any longer."

The headmaster slumped visibly. Her eyes darted sidewise at the proctors with a silent accusation: You said he wouldn't give us any trouble. "Please understand-we can't let Natch go until the hive finishes its official inquiry. The board of directors might still decide to prosecute him."

"Prosecute him?" said Vigal with furrowed brow. "What would they prosecute him for?"

"Believe me, there are things they can do. Most of the other boys say that Natch led that bear right towards them, that he knew what he was doing the whole time.... Now we've got angry parents threatening all kinds of legal action. Natch should count himself lucky that the initiation compound falls under the jurisdiction of our L-PRACG and not one of theirs." The headmaster combed her stringy gray hair with the fingers on one hand and peered nervously at the pedestrians surging past on the platform. Who knew which of them would turn out to be a disgruntled investor or a muckraking drudge?

"Between you and me," she continued over Confidential Whisper, "I think we'll be able to come to some agreement with the parents and make this whole thing go away. We really are doing the best we can. But until we can get everything straightened out, Natch is better off at the hive. There are lunatics making death threats against him, drudges sending multi requests at all hours, politicians calling on him to testify ..

"But no capitalmen."

"No," the headmaster replied with distaste. "No capitalmen or fiefcorp masters or recruiters at all, thankfully."

Vigal had changed little since Natch had last seen him. He still wore the same impeccable gray goatee and the unostentatious ocher robe that signaled a hopeless lack of fashion. Vigal was a monument against time, like the cabins in the initiation compound-something that stood unchanged through the vicissitudes of the seasons.

He had certainly not lost his gift for understatement. "Things are not going so well for you, it seems," said the neural programmer.

Natch sat on his bed and sulked in silence. The hive dorm, which had been unimaginably vast when he was eight, now felt small and constricting.

"Do you want to talk about what happened out there?" prodded Vigal gently.

"No," said Natch. He had spent the past few days staring at the ceiling, trying to recount those panicked few minutes in the woods, trying to decide what had happened. Had he purposefully led that bear into Brone's path? Or had it just been a gut instinct, a subconscious split-second decision? Could he have yelled out some warning, waved his arms, something? "I don't want to talk about it. Not while so many things are unsettled."

"What things?"

"Practical things, now things." The boy leaned back against the window and traced a finger over the fiefcorp industry pie charts he had put there. "I'm seventeen, Vigal. I should be looking at apartments and shopping for a bio/logic workbench. Picking out L-PRACGs. But instead, I've got no future, no prospects, nothing. I'm the most hated person in the world right now, and all because ... because ..." He couldn't find the words to finish his sentence, and bashed his fist against the window.

Serr Vigal pursed his lips into a frown. "Surely it can't be that bad. What about all those recruiters who were hounding you before initiation?"

"Nothing," Natch sighed bitterly. "The capitalmen won't even acknowledge my existence. Oh, a few of the fiefcorp masters will talk to me, but their offers are just laughable. People want me to apprentice for them on spec, not even for room and board. Everyone else just prives me out the instant they find out who I am."